Mental health and clinical psychological science in the time of COVID-19: Challenges, opportunities, and a call to action.

COVID-19 presents significant social, economic, and medical challenges. Because COVID-19 has already begun to precipitate huge increases in mental health problems, clinical psychological science must assert a leadership role in guiding a national response to this secondary crisis. In this article, COVID-19 is conceptualized as a unique, compounding, multidimensional stressor that will create a vast need for intervention and necessitate new paradigms for mental health service delivery and training. Urgent challenge areas across developmental periods are discussed, followed by a review of psychological symptoms that likely will increase in prevalence and require innovative solutions in both science and practice. Implications for new research directions, clinical approaches, and policy issues are discussed to highlight the opportunities for clinical psychological science to emerge as an updated, contemporary field capable of addressing the burden of mental illness and distress in the wake of COVID-19 and beyond. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Introduction to the special section on sexual and gender minority health.

The field of sexual and gender minority health has advanced exponentially in the past decade. The Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology (JCCP) has made important strides in publishing work on sexual and gender minority health. Although the following set of articles was not originally planned as a special section, most of the articles address, in some way, sexual and gender minority specific stressors such as perceived or overt stigma and/or the higher risk for emotional and substance use problems facing this population. Together, the papers in this section are models of some of the best work being conducted on sexual and gender minority health. Not only do they address significant problems, they do so in large, nonoverlapping samples, using novel and strong methodologies. (PsycINFO Database Record

The relationship between experiences of discrimination and mental health among lesbians and gay men: An examination of internalized homonegativity and rejection sensitivity as potential mechanisms.

OBJECTIVE: The current study used path analysis to examine potential mechanisms through which experiences of discrimination influence depressive and social anxiety symptoms. METHOD: The sample included 218 lesbians and 249 gay men (total N = 467) who participated in an online survey about minority stress and mental health. The proposed model included 2 potential mediators-internalized homonegativity and rejection sensitivity-as well as a culturally relevant antecedent to experiences of discrimination-childhood gender nonconformity. RESULTS: Results indicated that the data fit the model well, supporting the mediating roles of internalized homonegativity and rejection sensitivity in the associations between experiences of discrimination and symptoms of depression and social anxiety. Results also supported the role of childhood gender nonconformity as an antecedent to experiences of discrimination. Although there were not significant gender differences in the overall model fit, some of the associations within the model were significantly stronger for gay men than lesbians. CONCLUSIONS: These findings suggest potential mechanisms through which experiences of discrimination influence well-being among sexual minorities, which has important implications for research and clinical practice with these populations.